In the hotel industry, there is a continual need to provide as many services for the guest as possible in the most convenient manner. (The word "hotel" in this application refers to any multi-user establishment including hotels, motels, hospitals, airplanes, etc.) In addition, there is the continual need to provide such services to the guest in the most efficient manner. (The word "guest" or "user" in this application refers to any user of the entertainment and information system described herein.)
When video cassette players and tapes were introduced to the consuming public as a whole, some hotel establishments installed individual video cassette players in their guest rooms so that their guests could privately view movies. However, such arrangements were cumbersome and required the hotel guest to walk to the movie rental location in the hotel or elsewhere and rent the video. Then, upon viewing the video, such arrangements typically required the hotel guest to return the video before departing.
Subsequently, systems were developed which could disseminate movie videos from a central location within a hotel to the rooms of the individual hotel guests as desired by the guests. Such systems were generally not developed or operated by the hotel establishment, but were developed, installed and operated by outside vendors. An example of such a system is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,244 and the corresponding U.S. Reissue Pat. No. 34,611. Such systems were inherently flawed in that, among other things, they depended on the hotel for collecting revenues from the guests and for providing assistance to the guests as required. In addition, such systems required that a large staff of personnel be maintained to provide maintenance and other services as required.
In such prior systems, any charges generated by a particular room were either added to the hotel guest's bill electronically through an interface with the hotel's accounting computer or were automatically printed and manually entered by the hotel management onto the guest's account. Due to the expense of developing interfaces for every hotel's accounting system, such automatic systems are often impractical and not universally utilized. The manual method often led to a failure to post certain charges, and in some circumstances incorrect amounts were charged by the hotel. In addition, unscrupulous hotel guests often fabricated problems in order to escape payment for services rendered. As a result, vendors experienced substantial problems with account adjustments and collections utilizing the prior systems. Moreover, in such systems, the vendor was dependent on the hotel or management company to reconcile invoices and to pay in a timely manner.
The limited resources and tight profit margins characterizing the operation of smaller properties exacerbated the above mentioned difficulties. Further, the transaction costs of dealing with these properties were high. That is, because of an almost universal absence of single source property management, each hotel had to be dealt with on an individual basis.
Maintenance for such systems was performed on a regular basis by the vendor who would normally send a representative to the hotel location to change the selection of video choices and provide any maintenance which might be required. If there were a problem during the daily operation of any particular system, the vendor would have to either rely on the hotel operator to fix the problem or provide a service staff near every installation. Of course, providing a maintenance staff near every hotel installation was so expensive that most vendors could not provide such services. Consequently, if a problem developed, the hotel would attempt to correct it or simply refund the movie system user's money. Even if the vendor were contacted in such situations, the vendor would typically be unable to provide any servicing of the system at the time unless a service representative happened to be at the location. Thus, in the majority of cases, the system would be out of service for a significant amount of time, even if the problem were relatively minor and could have easily been fixed by a trained service person.
An additional limitation with these systems was that the only service such systems provided to the hotel guest was the playing of videos. Such systems did not offer any services which required communications to any remote location such as a local food delivery establishment. Therefore, there has been a long standing need for an entertainment and information system that would offer additional services as provided by the invention disclosed herein.